vision sunday

Matthew 27:45-51

Memorize the Story of God

• MANY morning I wake up, songs on my heart and mind..

• Once I have my coffee, I sit down in my living room, and after a time of quiet before God, I open the Scriptures.

• I’ve done this for as long as I can remember.

• I resonate with Paul’s words to Timothy:

• “From infancy you have known the Holy Scriptures, which are able to make you wise for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus.” —2 Timothy 3v15

• In my home, we have a rule: “Bible before tech.” which is my version of Bonhoeffer’s Rule of Life: “Before our daily bread should be our daily Word.”¹

• Call it legalistic if you want, but I grew up where we had to say the “Hunt Family Confession”…a two-page rendition of Scriptural truths all of us memorized…

• The church I grew up in also prioritized scripture memory in kids ministry.

• You may be brand new to following Jesus, but I say that because many of us think of Scripture memorization as what you do as a child.

• In my case, as I grew older, I continued to read Scripture daily, but I gave up this practice of memorization. We do the same in Faith Kids.

• I came of age with Google. Why put in all that work?

• But in recent years I have come full circle to realize what the wise ones of the Way of Jesus have long said: This practice, of storing the truth of Scripture deep in your body, isn’t one you mature beyond or one that you can hack with an app or website.

• If anything, it becomes more important as we make progress in our spiritual journey.

Scripture is an essential practice for our faith.

And you see this modeled in the life of Jesus.

Jesus read, meditated on, studied, and memorized Scripture.

Matthew 27v45-46, 50

Pick up in verse 45: From noon until three in the afternoon darkness came over all the land. About three in the afternoon Jesus cried out in a loud voice, “Eli, Eli, lema sabachthani?” (which means “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”).

• You may not know this, but Jesus’ final words – “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” – are a quote from Psalm 22.

• Some people misread this line to mean Jesus is doubting God, or denying his faith. Or worse, that somehow God the Father was so disgusted with the sin on Jesus and in His wrath he turns away and can’t look or be near His son.

• Not at all.

• As you know, Jesus and the New Testament writers constantly quote, allude to, and hyperlink back to the Hebrew Bible.

• As a general rule, whenever you’re reading the New Testament and you see a quote from the Old, if you have time, pause, put your finger down, and go back to read the quote in its

full context.

Turn: Let’s do that now; turn to Psalm 22.

• Psalm 22 is what scholars call a “Messianic Psalm,” meaning, at one level, it was written by King David a thousand years before Jesus, to name his felt experience of being rejected by King Saul and the Jewish leaders, but at another level — it becomes clear as you read it — that David is prophesying about a future king who will go through far, far worse in order to bring about God’s final rule and reign, not only over Israel, but over the earth.

• Look at verse one:

Psalm 22:1, 7-8

• Sound familiar? In Matthew’s narrative, they mock Jesus like this as he’s dying.

Psalm 22:16;18

• Ring a bell?

• This is exactly what happens to Jesus on the cross, the soldiers cast lots for his robe.

• But then David’s prophecy of the Messianic king shifts gears in verse 23:

Ps 22:23-24

Remez - where a Rabbi would quote the first line of a well-known passage, and expect his listeners to call the entire passage to mind from their memories.

• Do you see the parallels between this prophecy and Jesus’ story? The soldiers casting lots, the people hurling insults, the feeling of being abandoned by God, and yet the promise that God’s Messiah will come through death and out the other side in the Resurrection.

• All this rich, poetic imagination was in Jesus’ mind as he was dying.

• But his quotation of Psalm 22 wasn’t just for him, it was also for his disciples.

• Keep in mind: This was an oral culture.

• People did not have Bibles to carry around and open up at church.

• Most people had memorized vast swaths of the Hebrew Bible — certainly the Psalms, which were sung and therefore easier to remember.

• Even today, we do not live in an oral culture. Our brains are not trained for this, but if I said to you;

• “A long time ago in a galaxy …” What are you thinking? “... far, far away …” And you see the yellow scroll from Star Wars in your mind.

• Or if I said: “I’ll tell you what I want …” What comes to mind? “What I really, really want …”

• This is what Jesus is doing. He is drawing to mind Psalm 22, this thousand-year-old prophecy of the coming Messiah’s death, and gaining strength from its literary power for himself and his followers to stand and face the cross and come out the other side.

This practice of absorbing key passages of Scripture so deeply into our bodies that they begin to take up residence in our inner woman or man is called “memorization.”

Scripture Memorization Matters

• And it is a key aspect of meditation.

• Remember: The word “meditate” is hagah in Hebrew, which literally means “to murmur,” because ancient readers would read at a low whisper under their breath because it’s an aid to memorization.

• Neuroscientists tell us that we process words – even words on a page – through our auditory system, which is why if we read out loud, it’s easier to remember what we read.

• This discipline of memorization was a rich part of Jesus’ Jewish heritage, and by extension, of our own.

And if Jesus needed to put Scripture to memory, how much more so do you and I?

• The philosopher Dallas Willard said the single most important spiritual discipline in his life was Scripture memorization.

• He even went so far as to say: “Memorizing Scripture is even more important than a daily quiet time, for as we fill our minds with great passages and have them readily available for our meditation, ‘quiet time’ takes over the entirety of our lives.”²

• He was not saying, “Don’t have a quiet time.” or devotion or coffee w/God or as we called it in Bible college - Fire Time. He was saying, “It’s crucial to keep Scripture in your mind and heart, not just for twenty or thirty minutes every morning, but all day long.”

• A pastor in Vancouver, BC writes about building an “inner library” of key passages we’ve put to memory that we can draw on in our time of need.

• Scholars estimate that Jesus quoted Scripture 180 times across the four gospels. That’s quite an inner library.

• In John 16, Jesus promised his apprentices that the Holy Spirit would remind them of his words. But to do that, we have to have Jesus’ words in our memories!

• God’s part is to bring the right Scripture to our minds at the right time, but our part is to build an inner library of key passages for the Holy Spirit to access day and night.

illus: HS will bring to your memory…

Hinge: And if you’re thinking, “That sounds like a lot of work,” and again, “I have Google,” let me just name a few examples of what memorization can do, that digital tools cannot.

It’s a way to:

1. Hear God’s voice.

• So many people I know wish God would speak to them …

• But they do not realize that one of the main ways God “speaks” to us is by bringing Scriptures to our minds.

illus:

• The Holy Spirit is able to access a Scripture from my memory bank and use it to guide the path of my life.

• But that would not have happened if, many years ago, I had not put it to memory.

2. Renew our minds.

• What we think about is so incredibly important.

• Willard once said: “The most important thing about us is our mind … and the most important thing about our mind is what it is fixed upon.”³

• The problem is, left to their own devices, our minds are often a chaotic mess.

• There is a Hungarian psychologist who was a world-renowned expert on consciousness, famously said the default state of the human mind is what he called “psychic entropy.”⁴

• One writer summarized his work by saying, “The undirected mind tends toward chaos.”

• Meaning, without something good, beautiful, and true to direct our minds toward, we default to negative rumination – we rehearse our mistakes (“I wish I had not said that.”), or our wounds (“I can’t believe she …”), we play out our fears in doomsday scenarios, we fume with anger or hurt.

• We need what Paul in Romans 12 called “the renewal of the mind.”

• One of the great gifts of modern science is its insight into “neuroplasticity”: the ability of the mind – of what we think about – to rewire the neural pathways in our brain and change who we are.

• There’s a rule of thumb in neuroscience called Hebb’s law: “Neurons that fire together, wire together,” which is a way of saying that every time you think a thought, it makes it easier to think that same thought again, and again, and again, and simultaneously, harder to not think that thought!

• For better or worse!

illus: I think of it like ruts in a dirt road. When you first make a road, it’s smooth, but every time you drive on a dirt road, you impact the dirt just a little. Then, repeatedly driving on it forms ruts in the road and eventually the ruts get so deep that you have to drive in them.

• This is why what we set our minds on will determine the kind of people we become.

• As its been said: “You are what your mind thinks about; You are what you contemplate.”⁵

• Put another way: You become like what you meditate on.

• I think of Paul’s letter to the Philippians:

• Do not be anxious about anything …

• Translation: Don’t let psychic entropy colonize your brain! Instead …

• … whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable — if anything is excellent or praiseworthy — think about such things …

• Other translations have “meditate on such things.”

• … and the God of peace will be with you.”

• And I know of no better way to fill your mind with what is true, noble, right, and pure than to memorize Scripture.

• When we do this, we partner with God to make our minds a beautiful place to live.

3. Resist temptation.

• Think of when Jesus was in the wilderness. When he was tempted by the devil, what did he do?

• He quoted Scripture.

• The Desert Fathers and Mothers took this story very seriously, and they pointed out that Jesus didn’t really engage much with the devil. He just calmly quoted Scriptures that replaced the devil’s lies with the truth of God, and he moved on.

• They called this practice antirrhēsis, which can be translated “talking back” or “counterspeaking.”

• One fourth-century Desert Father named Evagrius the Solitary wrote a book called Talking Back: A Monastic Handbook for Combating Demons.

• Best subtitle ever!

• But it’s less a book and more of a manual where he just bullet points lies and temptations from the devil and then writes out a corresponding truth from Scripture.

• The monks used it to memorize the long list of Scriptures, and whenever that particular lie or temptation would come to mind, like Jesus, they would just calmly counter it with a truth from Scripture.

• Talking back.

Psalm 119:10–11 “10 I have sought you with all my heart; don’t let me wander from your commands. 11 I have treasured (hidden) your word in my heart so that I may not sin against you.”

4. Draw on God’s strength in seasons of pain and suffering.

• it has been said: “The problem with a shallow Christian faith, is, when trauma comes, people have no neural pathways to deal with it, so they just play the music of the culture – rage, blame, fear, and despair.”

• It’s hard to comfort yourself well during suffering in real-time; you need to have it in you beforehand.

• You see this in Jesus on the cross. When he was under pressure, when he was squeezed, what came out of him?

• Scripture.

• I don’t know about you, but when I’m squeezed, what comes out of me is often not Scripture — it’s cursing, or grumbling, or catastrophizing.

• But Jesus was able to draw on his inner library to face the cross with joy.

illus: self-harm thoughts

Point: Do you see why memorization is such an important tool in our spiritual formation?

• Is it any wonder some scholars argue the most common command in all of Scripture is “Remember”?

• All of us are prone to spiritual amnesia — to forget what we need to hear again and again.

God has spoken His Word of life to us.

• That’s his part.

• Our part is to remember. rehearse. recall. repeat it.

Hinge: I hope that over the last four weeks, it’s become clear to you: Scripture isn’t just a book or a library, it’s a key mechanism of how we are formed.

• The Anglican scholar N.T. Wright said it this way:

• “The Bible isn’t simply a repository of true information about God, Jesus, and the hope of the world. It is, rather, part of the means by which, in the power of the Spirit, the living God rescues his people and his world, and takes them forward on the journey toward his new creation, and makes us agents of that new creation even as we travel.”⁷

Recap: This is why:

• We read Scripture.

• And meditate on Scripture.

• And study Scripture.

• And memorize Scripture.

Seam: As we come to the end of this Collection …

• Our prayer for you as we conclude is not just that you get a better grasp of the literary nature of the Bible and play around with a few different ways of engaging with it …

• But that you make the regular reading of Scripture, morning by morning, an anchor for your life with God. And as you practice, know …

• Short-term, most days it’s just daily bread. You likely don’t remember what you ate three days ago. Yet it’s why you are still alive.

• But long-term, the goal is that through the “renewal of the mind” our “psychic entropy” is transformed into the “mind of Christ.”

• We begin not just to think about Scripture, but to think Scripture or to think Scripturally.

• The goal is for God’s thoughts to imprint so deeply on the neural pathways of our brains that when we are squeezed or when all is well we just naturally think the way God thinks and feel the way God feels, we see the world through his eyes, and we live with and in God, like Jesus.

But this may take a very long time …

Taking on the mind of Christ inside the psychic entropy of our brains is the lifelong process of discipleship to Jesus.

As we daily immerse our minds in Scripture and draw near to God, slowly but surely, over years, and decades, inch by inch, Christ himself is formed in us.

So tomorrow morning as you rise, may you “go to the one your soul loves,” and may you meet Jesus on every page.

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Talk it Over (being honest & open with friends, a spouse, or your Group)

This week we looked at the importance of memorizing the Screiptures as an apprentice to Jesus. What is one idea from Sunday’s message that impacted you?

Read Matthew 27:45-46 and Psalm 22. What are some things the Holy Spirit is highlighting as we read the text?

How have you experienced the truth of “you are what you contemplate” or “you become what you meditate on”?

Read —Psalm 19v7-14 .Observe the ways the Psalmist describes the commands, statutes (laws), precepts (principles), and decrees (orders or decisions) of the Lord. What stands out to you?

The Psalmist treasures God’s orders and decisions as more precious than gold and sweeter than honey. What value do you place on them in your own life, and how do they affect your daily choices?

Reflect on verses 12 and 13. Discuss the relationship between God’s forgiveness and being named blameless and innocent. What does this tell us about God’s character?

Pay attention to the last verse (v14). What is the Psalmist’s prayer and desire? Note how the Psalmist addresses the Lord: “my rock and my Redeemer.” Discuss the significance of these things together.

What is one small step you can take to weave Scripture memorization into your current daily habits?

Let’s talk about how memorizing Scripture can shape our understanding of God’s character and his promises. Share a specific verse that has changed the way you see God. Or share a Scripture that you need right now in order to understand God in a new light.

If you could share only one insight or reflection that you want to internalize going forward from this Collection of teachings, what would it be?